Thursday, November 8, 2007

Strategic Home Improvements

While it may seem as if we're running around here like chickens with our heads cut off, there really is a plan. It's just that some things are easier if you do other things first. And some things require that they be done in a certain order. So there's a lot of strategic planning involved in an old home renovation. Then of course you have to throw in the gotta-do-it-now damage control projects.

This spring we had the roof replaced. We also needed to replace all the guttering, given that it all flows in the opposite direction than what it should. And for those of you not intimately attune to the functional properties of guttering, that's bad. So we made all the phone calls. Collected all the quotes. Decided on a contractor. Who of course, never bothered to come back. And now isn't accepting our calls.

Fast forward a few months and we are making the phone calls, collecting the quotes...because the gutter replacement now fits into the strategic plan. If we wait one more week after all the leaves have fallen, we won't have to clean them out!

Favorite Quotes

"Nowadays, people are so jeezled up. If they took some chamomile tea and spent more time rocking on the porch in the evening listening to the liquid song of the hermit thrush, they might enjoy life more."

- Tasha Tudor

"I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

- Albert Einstein

"My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."